Why Removing the Obstacles to Community in Local Churches Is Necessary for True Discipleship

For most people, the local church worship service represents what church is. This is why I chose to focus on the obstacles to community-building at these services over the past six weeks. Let me acknowledge that for the majority of my pastoral career, I subscribed to the idea that my role with students was to preach to them at our large group meetings. With some variation, these meetings mirrored a typical church service, just with more freedom to change things up. But I never challenged the basic template until near my retirement from campus ministry. So, when I am being critical of how church services are conducted, I am acknowledging that my younger self did and approved the same approach.

Churches are set up to draw people to their worship services. Yes, they may seek a connection through small groups or some type of community outreach, but the primary purpose of those is to draw people to the worship services. In today’s context this is why it is so important for people coming into these services to have the opportunity to experience community. Local churches shouldn’t squander the opportunity, but unfortunately most of them do.

Instead of having a vision for creating community and the willingness to change how they do things on Sunday mornings, they continue to use a template that continually stands in the way of developing true community, a template that puts the pastor front and center. I believe they know this, so they “nibble around the edges” trying to create a feel of community without the deep substance necessary to truly cultivate it.

So, let’s dig into this a little further. My change in thinking began when I finally posed the question to myself about the freshmen with Christian backgrounds who became involved in my ministries. After 18 years of immersion in Christian surroundings, why were most so spiritually immature? They had Christian parents, had been involved in children’s and youth ministries, listened to sermons, and attended VBS and Christian camps. I realized what I had observed, but never really questioned, was the result of what had happened “upstream” in their lives. They were spiritually immature because they had never been properly discipled. To be very concise (because as my wife knows, I can go on and on about this!), parents aren’t being truly discipled by the local church, and, thus, they do not know how to properly disciple their children. It is then left to the local church programing to attempt to do it, but that continues to fail dramatically with 50%-80% of young people leaving the faith after graduating from high school.

So, you might rightfully question, what does this have to do with the worship service and the role of the pastor?

As a former campus pastor, I have a lot of “friends” on social media sites who are pastors, and, due to algorithms, I also get a lot of church ads. What strikes me is how many feature pictures or videos of the pastor on stage wearing a wireless mike and a tablet or Bible in hand. What this communicates, at least to me, is the pastor is the central figure in the church, and his primary function is preaching. And what does that preaching look like? Thirty to 40 minutes of talking. No true interaction or discussion of the content of the sermon with the congregation. Just talking. On stage. The focus of everyone’s attention. And I think most pastors think of this as discipleship. That is akin to thinking a classroom lecture on woodworking is the training one needs to become a woodworker. This is one of the reasons change is so difficult. Pastors have been trained to view preaching alone as discipleship, when in reality it is only a small facet. As Jesus exemplified, discipleship takes place in the context of community. He talked WITH the disciples and other followers; he ate WITH them; he SHOWED THEM how to do the work he was asking them to do. Very rarely does this take place in today’s American church.

For things to truly change, the pastor and other church leaders need to embrace the vision of true Christian discipleship and craft a strategy to achieve it. This must entail re-envisioning the role of the pastor on Sunday mornings and the opportunities that exist every Sunday morning for real discipleship. 

As long as the sermon is a lengthy monologue and viewed as the main tool of discipleship, people are prevented from opportunities to engage with one another on the implications and applications of the Scriptures that are taught that morning; in other words, the opportunity to be discipled in the context of authentic community.

So, my plea to pastors is to step back from embracing the role that is commonly assumed for you—preaching lengthy sermons that are mostly monologues with little or no engagement with the people in the seats. The question to ask is, is it truly effective in making disciples and creating deeper community?

Observing local churches today and my own 38 years of working with many young people coming from these churches, I believe the answer is no. A course correction is desperately needed if we are to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). And because the worship service is the dominant facet in church life, it makes sense to begin the changes there. The question is, do pastors and other church leaders have the courage and vision to do so?

Until next time. . .

© Jim Musser 2026